al-Aqoul al-Azima - Great Minds
by Mini Goat
Summary: Sammy has check-ins too but Jack is back in DC leaving the updates to Sam to handle


**_AN:_**_ Jon is starting to call Sammy 'Carter' an awful lot, isn't he? Sure it's habit but what's the reason he does so in the first place? Well, considering the alternative…_

_Set about a month after **Trapped** and shortly before **Survivor**._

**al-Aqoul al-Azima - Great Minds**

Sammy sat across from Sam and Gracie, who was sitting in one of the diner's supplied highchairs happily smashing oyster crackers. Neither knew the significance of the particular waitress serving them though if they had they both would have been extremely amused which stood to reason as they were exactly the same person up until last year.

"So no Jack this month, huh?" Sammy asked, herself, she supposed.

"We are both officially cleared for duty so he couldn't put off going to Washington any longer. You guys will just have to put up with me for a while." Sam said, smiling at thirteen year old herself who kept her hair a little shorter though not much and who dressed a little less preppy to fit in and a lot more edgy which was more to Sam's liking anyway. The long grey Nirvana shirt was covered by a slouchy flannel hooded jacket and she wore plaid stirrup pants with Doc Martins. Sam found it amusing that this time around she wasn't even attempting to fit in, having found her group with the confidence of someone who knew who she was and didn't care what others think.

"That's good I suppose. Jon will probably prefer checking in with you anyway. He keeps telling me talking to himself is weird."

Sam laughed. "No, what's weird is it doesn't bother us one bit."

"I think it's just experience. We had time to get over that early on." Sammy reminded her.

Sam grinned at herself. "Well it's Jack so there's a high probability he might be acting a little dramatic for attention."

"Our Jack? Noooo…" Sammy said in mock shock and denial then laughed with Sam. Jack wasn't overtly dramatic but he did like attention and he wasn't especially picky about what kind.

"So how bored are you in school." Sam asked her after the waitress took their orders.

"I've been helping Mary with her stuff so I'm not thinking about taking a cordless drill to my temple." Sammy admitted.

"I'd have gotten you into the same grade but they wouldn't let you jump more than two grades unless I sent you to a charter school. Not that it would have helped much." Sam admitted.

"Oh yah well hard pass. The whole point was to be around Jon because he was moping." Sammy reminded her.

"He's kind of cute as a teenager." Sam admitted. "How is he really dealing with that?"

"Pretty well considering. Most of the time he remembers to act sixteen in public." Sammy took a sip of her diet Coke.

"Just a really sarcastic, exasperated sixteen."

"You know he probably was always like that."

Sam smirked. The younger her wasn't wrong. She had trouble imagining Jack acting any other way even as a kid. "He'll live." She decided. "So how weird is this really?" She asked Sammy who was toying with her bowl of soup.

"It's fine." Sammy said with a shrug.

Sam just looked at her pointedly.

"Ugh, fine, being thirteen is ok. The weird part is I totally forgot how out of whack my hormones are so I'm moody all the time and I keep coming on to Ja… er, Jon all the time and he flips between being totally weirded out and encouraging it." She admitted.

"He's probably having the same issue." Sam said thoughtfully. Jack's clone had been too busy being exasperated at being fifteen when he'd been on base initially but she'd seen the abject hope in his eyes once she showed up to 'rescue' him from George.

"Oh yah and he keeps slipping up and calling me 'Carter'."

Sam chuckled. "I'm not really very surprised by that. In his head calling you Sammy is reserved strictly for dad."

"I know. Uncle Wil calls him 'Sport' and me 'Kiddo'." Sammy said chuckling.

"Wil called half the new kids on base kiddo for a year or so depending on how quick they ramped up or stopped squeaking when they addressed him." She reminded Sammy.

"Ok yah, true." Sammy said smirking. "How long did it take Jack to admit he's been calling you 'sweetie' in his head for years?"

Sam grinned. "Wedding night. You?"

"He asked me to grab something for him out of his hockey bag back right before my birthday and 'Sam Sweetie' just slipped out. He turned so red and everyone laughed." Sammy said, her eyes twinkling in merriment.

"I'm guessing that has something to do with the chronic Carters." Sam pointed out to her.

"Huh. Yah, probably." She admitted as she bit into her chicken salad sandwich.

"Oh, watch out when it comes out 'Samantha Sweetheart'. He's either up to no good or you're going to need contraception. Sometimes both"

"Sam!" Sammy exclaimed and blushed furiously.

Sam grinned. "Just letting you know."

"For crying out loud, I'm having enough problems controlling my libido and you add that to the mix." Sammy told a smirking Samantha.

"I wouldn't be doing my due diligence if I didn't warn you." Sam told her wickedly.

"Yah I'm starting to see why the other kids keep telling me I'm evil." Sammy said, snorting with laughter.

Sam laughed. Gracie who had no idea what was going on laughed because Sam laughed. This made Sammy laugh too.

"Can I get you two anything else?" The waitress asked them.

Sam beamed up at her "I'm fine, you Sammy?"

"Nope, I'm good Carter." She said doing a fair imitation of Jon's voice that made Sam laugh.

"Huh, you married ta that tall fellow with grey hair that comes in here with a teenage boy that looks just like him?"

Sam gave Sammy an arched look. "What did they do?" she asked in resignation.

"Oh, nothing, just good ta see him wearing his wedding band regularly that's all." She said smirking.

"Well, he's a General in the Air Force. So depending on if he's been on base, it might be on his dog tags most of the times you saw him in here without me. That's where I keep mine on duty." Sam said, smiling brightly knowing exactly what the girl was trying to do having not been born yesterday and knew exactly how handsome her husband was.

The waitress blushed and ducked her head. "Ah." Was all she said.

Sammy studiously looked at her plate smothering a giggle.

The waitress slunk away.

"I'm sort of amused neither of them told us about that." Sam said laughing.

"Depends on what was going on. Jon said Jack was kind of a wreck after you dumped Pete."

"Well if he hadn't tried to shovel both his feet into his mouth at the same time…" Sam said amused. She wasn't mad at him. Things had worked out. But she wasn't above a hard eyeroll at her husband's nonsense either.

Sammy nodded. "So basically other than Jon calling me Carter all the time things are fine."

Sam looked at her for a long moment thinking. "Just go with it."

"What?"

"You heard me. Just let him."

"But-"

"Look at it this way, he does it specifically because otherwise he calls you Sam Sweetie in public right?"

Sammy narrowed her eyes at Sam. "I suppose."

"So just let him. We both know it's always been a pet name anyway. And at least it's not 'babe'."

"Ugh. Gag." Sammy told her.

"Exactly. I should have known when his pet name for me irked me that things weren't going to work out. Can you imagine twenty years of that?"

"Yes. That's why we didn't marry the shrub."

"Cassie calls him a spud."

"He's both."

Sam shook her head. "I wish Janet had said something."

"She did. You got mad at her."

"I know." Sam sighed. She missed her best friend. She especially missed how much she would have enjoyed going through with a wedding Sam wanted to be the bride in. Most of all, she missed Janet's sound advice. Vala was very sweet but not the person Sam would go to for advice. She was fun though and got Sam out of her comfort zone. Even if she was a bit hyper and kooky. She was more or less a female Jack with less sarcasm.

"Oh, before I forget, if you need to see the OB and Mary or Wil objects, just let me know and I'll take you."

"Good luck. They probably won't let me go on anything until I'm regular. We decided on skipping penetration as a precautionary measure since we all know what happens when there's a slip up."

Sam gave her an amused smile. "All right. When you're ready, I'll make sure one of us takes you for a depo shot although you could probably use the patch since it's going to be a lot of years before you can weasel your way on base."

"Why I'd never." Sammy said, laughing.

"Yah. Sure you wouldn't." Sam chuckled. "Come on, I'll take you home. I need to drop off Gracie and get some work done."

"I can take her."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely. Gracie and I are buddies, aren't we sweet potato?" Sammy asked the toddler.

"Ammy!" Gracie announced to Sam and Sammy's amusement.

"Well, that settles that." Sam said as she put on her coat and pulled Gracie out of the highchair.

"Say, you don't happen to know what happened to my pillowcases, do you?"


End file.
